A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People's Institution by Travis Elborough
Travis Elborough . Unknown Year . English
'A fascinating, informative, revelatory book' William Boyd, Guardian Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life, you might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there. In fact, public parks are an invention. From their medieval inception as private hunting grounds through to their modern incarnation as public spaces of rest and relaxation, parks have been fought over by land-grabbing monarchs, reforming Victorian industrialists, hippies, punks, and somewhere along the way, the common folk trying to savour their single day of rest. In A Walk in the Park, Travis Elborough excavates the history of parks in all their colour and complexity. Loving, funny and impassioned, this is a timely celebration of a small wonder that – in an age of swingeing cuts – we should not take for granted.
Categories: History
About the Author
Travis Elborough is an author and social commentator, described by The Guardian as ‘one of Britain's finest pop cultural historians’. His books include The Bus We Loved, a history of London’s Routemaster bus; The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records published as The Vinyl Countdown in the Unites States; Wish You Were Here, a survey of the British beside the seaside and A Walk in the Park, a loving exploration of public parks and green space, hailed as 'a fascinating, informative, revelatory book' by William Boyd. Atlas of Improbable Places, his collaboration with the cartographer Alan Horsfield, was saluted by Monocle magazine for ‘making the world feel bigger.’ He has also compiled such anthologies as Our History of the 20th Century: As Told in Diaries and Letters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell. A regular contributor to international print and broadcast media, he has penned articles on all aspects of travel and culture, from pirates in the Caribbean to donkeys at the British seaside.
